The Co-operative Bank has reported a £75.8 million pre-tax loss for the first half of the year.

Co-op Bank, which was rescued from near collapse last year, said despite racking up further losses, it was encouraged by the progress made since booking a first-half loss of 844.6 million last year and a £1.3 billion loss for the 2013 year.

The bank said it had cut overall headcount by 13 per cent in the first half and closed 46 branches, and further branch closures are planned in the second half of the year.

Co-op Bank has also booked a net loss of 28,199 customer accounts, which the lender said amounted to less than two per cent of current accounts held.

The bank lost around 38,000 current account customers in the first half and gained around 9,700.

Chairman Richard Pym said the loss of current account customers followed “negative publicity and significant competitor activity”.

Customer deposits also dipped five per cent in the first half.

The bank has booked a further £39 million provision to meet historic conduct issues down from £163 million in the same period of 2013 and £244 million for the second half.

It has added a further £5 million provision to meet payment protection insurance (PPI) mis-selling with the remainder of the latest provision to cover technical breaches of the Consumer Credit Act, an issue it first revealed earlier this year.

Co-op Bank was forced into a rescue deal with its bondholders - including US hedge funds – last year to shore-up a £1.5 billion hole in its balance sheet, which as a result saw the Co-op Group hand over majority ownership of banking division to the bond holders, who now hold an 80 per cent stake.

A report into the bank's near collapse, published earlier this year by former Treasury mandarin Sir Christopher Kelly, said the banks woes were largely a result of toxic loans it inherited from its disastrous merger with the Britannia building society.

The bank said it offloaded around £1 billion in non-core assets in the first-half, which included chunks of the sub-prime mortgage portfolio inherited from Britannia.

The Co-op Bank's chief executive, Niall Booker, warned the lenders problems are “deep-rooted and there remains much to be done”.

He said the board does not expect the bank to book a full-year profit until 2016.

He said: “Considering the scale of the challenge we faced a year ago, we are encouraged by the progress made to ensure the stability of the bank.”

The bank has raised its tier one capital ratio – a measure of financial strength – from 7.2 per cent at the turn of the year to 11.5 per cent at the end of the first half, with £1.9 billion of new capital raised – the bulk of which came from a £1.5 billion debt for equity swap.

On the bank's plan to float on the stock exchange, Booker said: "It is logistically unlikely that an IPO could be executed before the end of 2014”.

The bank has formed a committee to consider the feasibility and timing of an initial public offering (IPO) which will meet for the first time in September.

However, Booker said the regulator the Prudential Regulation Authority (PRA) has "indicated it would be concerned if an IPO were to distract focus from the primary goal of delivering the bank's turnaround plan".